This invention relates to electronic program guides that incorporate advertising messages or words.
As the number of television channels available on cable and by satellite expands, an onscreen electronic program guide (EPG) become more indispensable. Such an EPG permits the user to sort the available present and future programming by theme, time, and channel. As a result, the user can find a program of interest more easily.
It is costly to collect EPG data for display and to transmit such data to the consumer. Thus, there is a need to find a way to recover the cost of these activities.
According to the invention, advertisements are inserted in an EPG on the screen of a display monitor between the individual television program listings. Specifically, a memory stores EPG data and advertising data. A microprocessor is programmed to recover EPG data corresponding to a number of television programs and advertising data from the memory. The microprocessor controls the monitor to display the recovered EPG data on the screen in lines of television program listings, each television program listing being displayed in a separate line, and to display the recovered advertising data in a line on the screen instead of one of the television program listings.
In a preferred embodiment, the EPG and advertising data are displayed in a first area of the screen and a detail window is displayed in a second area of the screen. One of the lines of EPG data is highlighted with a cursor. A description of the television program listing highlighted by the cursor is inserted in the second area. When the line of advertising data is highlighted with the cursor, a description relating to the advertising data is inserted in the second area.